


One, Two, Three

by Writelyso



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:54:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26021494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writelyso/pseuds/Writelyso
Summary: A lady of considerable intellect and wit teaches Jack a new skill.
Relationships: Concetta Fabrizzi/Jack Robinson, Jack Robinson/Rosie Sanderson, Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Comments: 13
Kudos: 54





	One, Two, Three

**Author's Note:**

> Reference to S1E11 (Blood and Circuses). Set around S3E3 (Murder and Mozzarella) to S3E6 (Death at the Grand) – August 1929.

The winter rain of the August evening battered against the window of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson’s kitchen as he carefully prepared dinner for his anticipated guest. In the months since his divorce and official reclassification as a single man, he had methodically applied himself to learning to cook some decent dinners. He found it calming and blissfully mindless to measure, and chop, and stir, after long days spent in police plodwork or – perhaps worse – police paperwork. The ordered regimen of a recipe (“1. Cut the meat into cubes. 2. Mix a tablespoon of flour with salt and pepper. 3. Coat the meat pieces with the flour mixture…”) spoke to him of a world where life was predictable and if you followed instructions, you would achieve your desired result. God knows, he’d seen his share of chaos, and it didn’t suit him.

Jack was extremely fond of the lady he was expecting for dinner this evening, and a smile played round his lips as he added a final pinch of salt to the lamb stew, anticipating her enjoyment, which he knew she would express with gusto. The aroma of the stew mingled with the yeasty fragrance of the bread in the oven. Jack in his butcher’s striped apron was a picture of contented domesticity swathed in a cloud of mouthwatering smells when he opened the back kitchen door to his guest’s knock. 

“Else, come in, come in, you must be soaked.”

“Evening, Jack. I wouldn’t say no to a towel, a seat, and a cup of tea, in that order.”

Jack quickly provided all three, and hung Elsie Tizzard’s coat over the back of a chair near the fire, hoping the motheaten garment would be dry and warm by the time she was leaving. They had many years of acquaintance turned to friendship behind them, despite an inauspicious start when newly-minted Constable Robinson had arrested Elsie for some inebriated misdemeanour, his very first collar. She never held it against him. And ever since Jack had bent the rules a while back to allow Elsie’s son to see her before his return to prison following a jail break, Jack really could do no wrong in Elsie’s eyes.

“Are you getting up to see Matthew these days, Else? How long now till he’s out?”

“Yeh, Jack, he was asking for you when I saw him last month. Nine years to go till he’s home to his mum, though - if he toes the line this time and doesn’t do anything else stupid, like trying to escape. What was he thinking? The best laid plans of mice and men, Jack.”

And while they both knew that Elsie might not be around, in her 80s, to welcome home her paroled son nine years hence, Jack kindly said, “Think of it, Else, having Matt around to look after you again, won’t it be grand?” 

“I’ve kicked it for good, Jackie, the drink – I’ll make a proper home for my boy when he needs me again.”

Jack had observed that Elsie looked well, eyes clear, with her considerable intelligence and wit all the more evident now that she was off the booze. 

“How are you managing, Else? Need anything? You know you can always ask.”

“Don’t you worry about me, Jack. I’ve got some work here and there, mending and that, and I’m managing fine. Not lavish, but fine.”

As she chatted on about Matthew, tucking into her dinner, it struck Jack that he had known Elsie Tizzard longer than almost anyone else who was still in his life. Rough and ready Elsie was a far cry from Jack’s own reserved and refined late mother, yet he felt almost a filial fondness for the paradoxical little elderly woman who so often surprised him with her knowledge and perspicacity. She was the only one left who’d known him as a boy, well - as a brand new police officer, which was almost the same thing. Different as their paths had been, they had both been reshaped by the grim years of the great war, and the flu, and the economic turmoil and strikes of the early 1920s, common experiences which had left them in the same small lifeboat, rowing like mad for the shore. 

“Well, Jack, I know I have to sing for my supper, or dance, more like,” said Elsie, finishing a bowl of blanc mange that he couldn’t credit she’d had room for. 

Jack grinned at his guest, appreciating her willingness to get down to the real purpose of the visit. For Jack had his eye on a certain dark-haired beauty, and knew he would have to brush off his rusty courting skills, unused since he married his sweetheart, Rosie, so many years ago, just around the time he’d first arrested Elsie. 

Jack had thought Elsie could no longer surprise him, but he had to eat his words when she had recently revealed, in a conversation over lunch from the meat pie cart, her past as a dancer of some note, a headline entertainer at the Ballarat Vic in the 1880s and 90s, before loss and war and widowhood and poverty had washed her up. Jack had hatched a plan to learn to waltz to impress his intended, without having to embarrass himself trying to learn, at his age, at a public dance hall or in expensive private lessons. He had managed to woo the young Rosie with walks, and rides on his bicycle handlebars, and days at the seashore, along with his prospects as an up-and-coming copper, but they had never once gone to a dance. Then in the early married years when they might have gone dancing, he’d been knee deep in the muddy French salient. He had carefully avoided the Firemen and Policemen’s Ball in the early years of his married life and was even less inclined to attend when he returned a changed and saddened man from the war. He’d had no desire to dance, and neither had Rosie, as their barren marriage soured and ended. 

So here he was at age 36 with an elderly reformed souse about to teach him the rudiments of the waltz. Jack smiled to himself at how odd life can be.

If you had looked in through the window of Jack’s little house that evening, you would have seen a Jack Robinson quite different from the reserved police inspector his constables were used to. ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, Elsie commanded as Jack schooled his feet in the steps while trying to maintain his shoulders and arms in a perfect waltz frame. More than once, he collapsed in mock despair onto his sofa, guffawing at his own clumsiness, but Elsie proved a dogged and encouraging teacher. Jack liked his whisky but for Elsie’s sake, they had a teetotal evening, which did not stop them from a bout of spontaneous silliness, harmonizing in a rousing chorus of “Waltzing Matilda.” 

“Can’t even bloody waltz to that one, can ya? It’s a march!” Elsie observed, drawing another laugh out of Jack.

After a couple of hours of instruction, Elsie pronounced Jack fit to waltz in high society. 

“Who’s the lucky lady, Jack? I reckon you didn’t want to learn to dance just so you could dance with old Elsie!”

“Nice try, Else. I’m not showing you my cards just yet, but I’ll invite you to the wedding, if our waltzing scheme works,” Jack promised, anticipating the moment when he’d waltz with the lovely Italian widow he’d been inching towards courting. Concetta. He knew she’d like Elsie, and Elsie would love Concetta’s laden dining table in a vague future where Jack could envision inviting the old woman over to his charming marital home for dinner. 

“If it works. The best-laid plans, Jackie. But if it works, I’ll be at your wedding with bells on.” She observed him critically, weighing equally the weariness around his eyes with the natural grace of his athletic frame. “It’s not too late for you to have some good years, some great years. And what lady can resist a man who can sweep her off her feet? You’ll waltz right into her heart.” 

Elsie’s coat was dry (although no less threadbare) and the rain had eased. She refused a ride home in the police car – she didn’t want to give her neighbours that tidbit to feast on – so Jack and she walked arm in arm to the tram stop, Elsie carrying a generous parcelled up meal for the next day. Jack fell into bed when he got back home, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three echoing in Elsie’s voice behind his closed eyes as he drifted off to sleep.

****

But, how odd life can be. Jack couldn’t have predicted how everything would change over the next few weeks. The charming freight train that was his colleague and friend The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher railroaded into his heart in a way he hadn’t seen coming. Visions of a staid domestic future began to fade, replaced by fantasies of travel and adventure Jack hadn’t indulged in since reading about far-off lands as a boy. He woke up from toss-and-turn dreams to the fading echo of ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three, him being the “one” and his dream head swivelling helplessly between the pair of lovely, dark-haired women playing the parts of the “two” and the “three”. 

Concetta must have sensed the change, or maybe just tired of Jack’s reserved approach because she took things into her own hands and proposed. And that crystallized for Jack his error in considering Concetta a romantic partner and Miss Fisher a platonic partner, when he should have seen the exact opposite was what was truly in his heart, which had grown rusty in the art of evaluating emotion. Concetta’s bold proposal followed by their cold kiss confirmed his insight. He would always admire Concetta for how quickly she had sized up the situation and how gracefully she had retreated. The best laid plans…

“Well, that was a waste of a dance lesson, but a good evening with Elsie in any event,” Jack thought ruefully to himself, looking back on his innocent scheme to win Concetta’s heart with his dancing skills, which he now felt belonged to a time long, long ago.

******

Then a suspicious death at the faded Grand Hotel put waltzing back on the table. Jack couldn’t believe the twists of circumstance that had brought him to a close collaboration with Miss Fisher, investigating a murder in the one hotel in Melbourne most renowned for its weekly Twilight Waltz. He silently, mentally and fervently thanked Elsie as a different plan began to form.

If you had looked in through the window of the Grand Hotel’s ballroom one evening, Jack and Phryne would never have noticed you. You might have spotted Elsie Tizzard, but they didn’t. They only had eyes for each other, ears for the music, feet and arms for the waltz. Elsie had been on her way to drop off a pile of mended hotel linens with the concierge, and collect her stipend. Still a dancer at heart, she'd been distracted by the sound of waltz music and pulled towards the ballroom door to investigate its source. She peeked in just in time to witness Jack’s plan in flawless action. Elsie smiled behind the mound of mending, watching the waltz, silently nodding in time and counting, “ONE-two-three, ONE-two-three. That’s it, Jack my boy. Waltz right into her heart.”

**Author's Note:**

> Her Majesty's Theatre in Ballarat (the Vic) opened in the 1870s and according to the internet is still there.


End file.
